


safe in your sound ('til i come back around)

by libellules



Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon, i can't figure out how to tag this fic, it's so all over the place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24502294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/libellules/pseuds/libellules
Summary: Kie and JJ deal with their grief and their not-so-platonic feelings for their not-so-dead best friends.
Relationships: JJ & Kiara (Outer Banks), Kiara/Pope (Outer Banks), one-sided JJ/John B. Routledge, one-sided Kiara/Sarah Cameron
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	safe in your sound ('til i come back around)

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been stuck in my head since I watched OBX and I finally got it out (even if it's a little messy and all over the place). I've written two other OBX pics but it felt really good to write from Kie's point-of-view for a change. I know this fandom goes crazy for Jiara but honestly, I just don't ship it. But, I love Kie and JJ's relationship and I wanted to explore their friendship a little more and I just couldn't help myself with this one. The title is from Someone You Loved by Lewis Capaldi and this fic is totally un beta'd so feel free to correct my grammar.

Kiara digs her nails against the crumbling, chipped, leftover purple polish on her fingertips. It’s a terrible habit and is certainly ruining her nails. But it’s the only thing Kie can control as she sits beside JJ on the end of the dock where the Pogues had said their last goodbye to John B the day before. JJ is crying but Kie can tell he’s trying his best to hide it. He’s quiet when he cries but there is a trembling hiccup that ripples through his spine that staring down at the water below fails to hide. Neither of them has spoken a word since Kie sat down ten minutes ago. 

Silence is so much louder when its shared between people. Kie had spent the entire night sobbing, shaking, screaming, and seething until she saw black and blue. Her mom had held onto her, slept in her narrow twin bed holding her as if she was a little girl who had woken from a nightmare, from a monster under the bed. Neither had said a word the entire night. She didn’t whisper renditions of _everything’s going to be okay,_ because both knew it was a lie. Kie didn’t know what she wanted to hear, what could possibly help her feel better. She couldn’t think of a thing to say to JJ to make him stop crying. 

So she picked at her nail polish and bit down on her chapped lips until the dead skin fell into the water below. 

John B and Sarah were dead somewhere in that goddamn Atlantic Ocean. Kie hated the ocean a lot—something Kie never thought she would hate. 

JJ let out a breath and the air caught like the snapping of a branch between them. _Crack_. He looked over at Kie and met her eyes. His were dark and sagging into his cheeks; he didn’t get any sleep either. Kie wasn’t sure if she should reach out and hug him or if she should push him into the ocean. Caught between channeling her fury into caretaking or aggression, Kie finally spoke. 

“I never realized that people can just die. You know? Like one minute they’re alive and the next they just…aren’t.” Kie decided that comforting JJ was impossible for her with her mind drowning in images of her and Sarah making friendship bracelets in the sand and the sound of John B’s laugh. 

“We saw John B yesterday. I shouldn’t have given him the keys to the Phantom.” 

“Stop, JJ. We all encouraged John B to go. John B wanted to risk his fucking life. This isn’t on you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“JJ. Come on.”

“Sorry.” JJ uncurled his feet from beneath his lap so they dangled over the edge of the dock and he leaned against the post, staring past Kie and out to the horizon. He fiddled with his hat absentmindedly and bit down his lip. He was probably trying not to cry. Kie wondered when she had stopped crying, why she felt no desire to cry right now. 

“I’m so _mad_ at them,” she admitted. JJ nodded, tears slipping out before he could catch them and wipe them away. Instinctively, Kie reached out but retreated before her fingertips could rest on his shoulder. “I hate them for killing themselves over that stupid gold.” 

“I hate John B,” JJ sniffed, tugging the brim of his hat down so it covered it face and then he flung it across the water like he was skipping a rock. “I loved him so much, Kie. I hate him for dying.” 

“Are we supposed to feel this angry right now?” Kie wondered aloud. 

“I think we’re supposed to wear all black and eat ice cream or something.”

“At least you’re crying. I’m too mad to cry.”

JJ shrugged, a few more tears rolling down his cheeks that he didn’t try to wipe away. The silence returned for a few minutes and Kie glued her eyes to the horizon line as if at any moment the Phantom was going to appear in the distance. Kie almost forgot JJ was sitting beside her until she heard his voice, gently crumbling, as he said:

“I really loved him, Kie. Like, more than just as friends.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t what Kie was expecting to hear. It was a momentary distraction from the fury boiling in her belly at the image of a sinking ship. There really was more to JJ Maybank than meets the eye. 

“I think,” he stammered, then nodded as if he had decided. 

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Did you ever say anything to him about that?”

“Couldn’t. Didn’t want to lose him.” The irony of the latter statement lingered in the air and Kie took a deep breath before allowing the words to tumble out of her mouth. 

“I kissed Sarah freshman year. It’s sort of the reason we stopped being friends, actually.” JJ’s eyes met Kie’s once again and they were wide as a cat’s, but he had a smirk on his face that reminded Kie of the smug JJ from the world where John B and Sarah were still alive. This felt like a manageable conversation, suddenly so easy amidst their grief. It was far less scary to be in love with your dead best friend. 

“Sarah freaked?”

“No, not at all. She was really chill about it but I just couldn’t handle being around her after it. She was with Topper and I was just there, hating myself for being in love with her.”

“I mean, she’s hot. I can’t blame you.” Kie would’ve teasingly slapped JJ in the old world, but in this world JJ was hit by far too many people and Kie refused to be another one of them. She rolled her eyes instead. 

“I missed her so much for so long and now that she’s gone it’s like I don’t have any sadness left in me. I just feel mad.”

“You process your emotions like insanely fast, you know?”

“Shut up, JJ. I’m being serious. I don’t know how to not feel mad at her.”

“I get it. I mean, I’m mad at John B too. He was supposed to be the one person in my life I could count on.”

“The one?” Kie asked, suddenly wondering how good of a friend she had been to JJ lately. He shook his head a bit frantically and spoke. 

“No! Not that you and Pope aren’t good friends, or anything. John B has just always been like that person for me. Since third grade, he’s always been the person who gave a damn if I had enough food and shit.”

“I give a damn if you have enough food and shit, JJ. So does Pope.”

“I know. I appreciate you two.” His shoulders had fallen and Kie wanted to keep arguing with him about how she was going to take care of him but she realized that wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have right now. JJ just wanted to miss John B. 

“I miss the really annoying way that Sarah was somehow always right about everything.” JJ sniffled and Kie figured he was done talking for a little while, so she continued. “I miss having a girl friend. Don’t get me wrong, Pogues for life, but having girl friends is just different.”

“I miss his stupid hair,” JJ mumbled, shoulders bouncing and Kie finally let herself reach out to him. He practically melted into her touch. 

“I miss her stupid hair too. Too shiny.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pressed her head against his. 

“Too fluffy.” Kie choked on a laugh. 

“He really did have fluffy hair, didn’t he?”

“It was so soft, Kie. And it always smelled like cucumbers from his shampoo.” Kie pressed a kiss to his forehead. JJ’s hair smelled like sweat and saltwater. Sarah’s hair smelled like lavender. JJ was crying again, silently and brokenly, and he tangled their hands together. 

“It’s not fa-fair,” he whimpered. Something about the way the sentiment broke him made Kie’s heart sink. “He can’t just b-be gone, Kie.” 

Kiara wrapped her other arm around JJ too so she could cradle him against her chest. His tears and sweat were hot in the humid, summer air against her skin. It wasn’t the right time to grieve. It was too hot to hug somebody and the sunset was too beautiful, the days too long. They were too young to die. It wasn’t the right time. 

A weight on Kie’s shoulder shook her from her thoughts and suddenly Pope was sitting on her other side, wrapping his long arms around both of them. JJ’s sobs were echoing off the water and surrounding the three of them. Kie sunk against Pope, JJ still tangled in her grip. There were only three Pogues now. 

The silence was easier to handle when the three of them were holding onto each other. 

They stayed like that until the sun had set below the horizon and the night was dark enough to hide their tears. Pope stood up, reaching out for Kie and then JJ, walking between them with an arm around each. Kie wondered how such a skinny guy could be so steady as she leaned against him on their walk to home. He smelled like nutmeg and apples and Kie wished she could fall asleep beside him like they weren’t only sixteen. JJ was half asleep by the time they got to Kie’s house and Pope spent a good five minutes maneuvering JJ onto his back before kissing Kie’s cheek and promising to call her in the morning. 

“Goodnight,” Kie whispered, wishing it could be an _I love you_ instead of just _goodnight_. She wished she could send Sarah a goodnight text, fall asleep in the living room of the Chateau with John B knock out on his bedroom floor. Kie wished JJ would stop crying and go back to his old self. Kie wished she wasn’t still so angry. 

Collapsing into her bed, trapped in the humid and sticky summer air, and suffocating in her anger, Kie wished the Cut wasn’t so silent at night. There was too much water around them, too many trees, too many crickets. Kie had kissed Sarah in the same bed, on the same pillows. Sarah was probably floating around in the swampy and polluted waters in Kook country. Maybe John B’s body had begun to float back home to the Cut.

Kie fell asleep angry that night. Kie woke up angry too, until she saw the missed call on her lock screen and listened to the voicemail from Sarah and John B. And then Kie finally began to cry.


End file.
